i5 2500k showing odd values in Intel Turbo Boost Monitor 2.0

I'm OCing my i5 2500k on the following (ignore my sig - that's my home rig):

ASRock Z68 Extreme-3 Gen-3
i5 2500k @ 44x
Zalman CNPS 9900 LED
Windows 7 x64
8GB DDR3 @ 800MHz

Anyway, does anyone know what would cause the Turbo Boost monitor 2.0 to show it's bar only about 75% of the total height of its display window?

It uses the entire window for the max OC on my home rig...

When you put a load on it does it jump up to the top of the bar?

That is at full load!

If I use the UEFI BIOS to set the max multiplier to 44 (as above), then this is what I see. If I use the ASRock OC utility to set the same multiplier, then I get what you would think I should see - 44 becomes the top of the window...

Very odd and mildly annoying! ;P

I'm unfamiliar with ASRock, and UEFI in general, so I'm learning how they label / do things.

I have to assume that TB2.0 thinks that there is a higher multiplier possible (hence leaving room for it) - but that in fact there isn't since I've manually OC'd the multiplier to 44.

I've turned on "Energy Savings" and "Speed Step", and set the Turbo max watts to 250, set the dynamic voltage to +.005, and set "Additional Voltage during Turbo Boost" to +.059. Otherwise it's all "normal/auto".

IS your clockspeed actually hitting 4.4Ghz? Use CPUz to find out.

If I remember with the ratio manually set it will show in the extended window but with the turbo ratio set and the manual ratio at default the window hit the top of the window.
Hopefully this makes some sense.

It seems that the issue is that my ASRock has "Turbo Boost" enabled (or reports it as enabled) even when manually setting the multiplier.

If I remove the OC, and simply run this utility, I can see that on a normal system 3.4GHz (the minimal turbo boost) shows as a sliver - and 3.7GHz shows as the full bar. So it must be that the ASRock somehow reports that its running at 44x, but Turbo Boost is enabled so the Intel TBM2.0 is reserving that space to show the 4GHz maximum turbo boost (which never happens).

Not sure how to convince the ASRock that Turbo Boost is disabled (that BIOS option disappears when I choose "manual" for the multiplier, and it resets the TB to enabled when it hides it - stupid BIOS software).

@EarthDog - Yeah, it's hitting the full 4.4GHz according to CPU-Z

I'm looking at turboboost 2.0 now, the dark blue stops at 3.4Ghz, then it's lighter blue to the 4,5Ghz I have.
If I disable the turboboost through realtemp settings, only the lightblue disappears, to return when I enable turboboost. It does this in steps, first 3,7 then 4,0 then 4,5Ghz. Quickly but noticable with the eye.

I would say the speed is there, only the different colours means you have turboboost and powerstates enabled, a fixed cpu speed should show one colour in the bar.
Anyway, if cpu-z and realtemp say your speed is 4,4 then it is. Realtemp shows various speeds very quickly depending on cpu load from the system, this happens the most when you boot into windows, then all kinds of services get loaded one at a time, causing some drive activity while you already can start your apps and games.

Software?

Yeah, Turbo Boost Monitor 2.0 is an Intel utility (software).

None of the software forums seemed appropriate to this inquiry...

I downloaded it to try it and it does the exact same thing to me. It doesn't go all the way up, it stops halfway thru. I think that's perfectly normal.

My monitor goes up higher than that, as my daily OC is at 5.0GHz.

It's not an empty bar from the start. The bottom part is the default clock of the cpu, the top part is the overclock or turbo boost.
Since realtemp offers in the settings the option to disable turboboost, it's very easy to do this and see your overclock disappear, in any utility.

yes, for i5-2500:
no bar = 16x (idle, maximum CPU power savings).
dark bar = 33x (normal, non-boosted operation at rated multiplier).
light bar = 34..+ (turbo boost engaged)

On my PC at home (see sig) the light bar climbs to the top of the TBM2.0 window.
On my PC at the office, the light bar only climbs to about 3/4 of the window height (and the bottom 1/2 is the dark bar).

I can only assume that TBM2.0 is reading the settings from my Gigabyte mobo and deciding "44x is maximum turbo boost, so scale so that 44x is top of window", while reading the ASRock bios and concluding "44x + maximum value for this CPU is maximum turbo boost, so scale so that 48x is top of the window" (where I get 48x by looking at the i5 spec, which is 37x maximum turbo boost on a single core, i.e. +4x above the rated clock for that chip).